Bill Joy For New National CTO Post?

jddeluxe writes "In an article in today's NY Times, John Doerr of Kleiner-Perkins proffered up Bill Joy's name when queried by Barack Obama for a recommendation for the position of Chief Technology Officer of the Unites States which Obama has promised to create and that the country is overdue to have. I think that's a brilliant idea, and while you're at it, have the FCC report to him as well, why don't you?" If Bill is unavailable, I'll throw my hat in the ring, although I'm holding out for Secretary of Tubes.

Comments

Isn't he the pessimist?

[A nonymous Coward]

I seem to recall Bill Joy having some decidedly pessimistic and even luddite attitudes towards future tech, but it's been so long since he's been in the news that I don't remember now what. Paranoid about nanotech, I think, for starters.

Re:Bill Joy's terrorist connection

[chrb]

You mean this?

"I am no apologist for Kaczynski. His bombs killed three people during a 17-year terror campaign and wounded many others. One of his bombs gravely injured my friend David Gelernter, one of the most brilliant and visionary computer scientists of our time. Like many of my colleagues, I felt that I could easily have been the Unabomber's next target. Kaczynski's actions were murderous and, in my view, criminally insane. He is clearly a Luddite, but simply saying this does not dismiss his argument; as difficult as it is for me to acknowledge, I saw some merit in the reasoning in this single passage. I felt compelled to confront it."

Bill Joy doesn't sound that out of line. If you're going to confront terrorists, you need to understand their doctrine and motivation so that you can discredit the entire philosophy, rather than just turn them into martyrs.

This is a huge opportunity

[Haig]

The Obama administration may be the place where the driving of the golden spike uniting open source development with open source government takes place. Using Federal IT standards to drive proprietary formats out of the government departments will create a cascade of rationalization and standardization throughout the US economy. Our creaky and costly medical care system desperately needs this kind of rationalization.

Accordingly, a prominent and effective member of the Open Source community should occupy this position, not a big-time software corporatist.

Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Joy is also the guy who keeps warning of the end of the world if we don't stop developing various technologies. He wrote a number of articles and did a bunch of interviews about the world turning to gray goo if we don't kill nanotech research, how computers and weapons will kill us all, etc.

He started work on a self-sufficient, solar powered sailboat, presumably his form of a bomb shelter for the coming techpocolypse.

Basically, he has turned in to a crazy old coot.

Re:No need

[AshtangiMan]

No one in the government encouraged mortgage lenders to make the "liars loans" (loans with no effort to verify employment and income status), package them and re-market them as AAA securities on the international market. Listen to this (45 min or so).

Re:I'd rather see someone involved in Free Softwar

[DrgnDancer]

But think about it, a really representative panel of that sort would really need someone representing, say, Microsoft, maybe Apple, maybe HP and/or Dell, and then a couple of FOSS guys. Imagine Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, RMS, and ESR on such a committee. Easily imagined. Now imagine anything getting done by this committee, ever... Not so easily imagined. When the closed source guys were not fighting over which of their personal pet technologies was best for a given purpose, they'd be in grid-lock as RMS and the FOSS guys try to block all proprietary anything. I'd be inclined to say that the closed source people should get 4 seats and the FOSS 3 seats: on the theory that it's more likely that at least on closed source advocate would side with FOSS on a given specific question than that the the FOSS guys will ever side with the closed source guys, and if all 4 cosed source guys agree with something it's likely to be a least a slightly open system.

Still I think one guy, preferably fairly neutral and willing to work with all parties and being advised by a committee like you recommend, would be better. He might not always do what any one of us might want or hope he'd do, but a least something will get done.
 

A holistic technocracy

[An dochasac]

It's amazing how narrowly focused even the "community" of slashdotters are. Open/Closed source software, indeed software or even computer technology is just a tiny fragment of the areas of science where, as a nation, we've lost the plot. Bill Joy is a computer visionary, but he also sees outside of the box. See some of his insights here In my opinion, the individual or committee needs to be broadminded enough to see the interrelationships of technologies and education. Here is my wish list:

• Restore the technical advisory counsel that Reagan sacked in favor of lobbyists.
• Balance the Reaganomic "fiscal" value of education with the real societal value of education so basic research on energy, health, economics... and other areas of science unlikely to help G.E.s stock price in the next 91 days, don't forever sit on the back burner while Europe, India, China and Japan leave us in the technological dark ages.
• Fix the SEC rules so they don't punish companies which throw money into research where they payoff is more than 91 days in the future. It's telling that the current market cap value of the R&D heavy company that Bill Joy cofounded (Sun) is far less than the global value of the technology contributed by that company.
• Treat universities as a long term societal investment, not a short term fiscal investments. Our great universities are decaying into trade-schools or country clubs... whilst falling behind our foreign counterparts.
• Use a six-sigma approach to all aspects of government (including voting). If the quality level of our hospitals was as low as that of our election counting, 800 babies would go home to the wrong parents every day.
• Tag all funded research with the funding organization so we can vet the tobacco, coal and other industry studies telling us that toxic waste is good for us.
• Focus government funding on areas of science with a longer term societal and fiscal payoff. We shouldn't be spending $1 of our tax money funding something that is only going to make Pfizer stockholders happy next year. Pfizer should be funding that!
• We have several equivalents to sputnik right now, global climate change, high oil prices,
• Create a technological WPA/CCC to rebuild our infrastructures in a green, sustainable, efficient and cost effective way. The 800 billion going to banks would be much better used to rebuild our infrastructure.
• Create an office of public science which explains scientific research and decisions to the public so we can all make more informed decisions about science.